flight was headed when it left the radar screen. so far, they re just discussing what we already know. here s what is driving this bizarre turn. a senior malaysian air force official tells cnn the jet liner veers hundreds of miles off course. top malaysian officials however now disputing that claim, but they re also saying that they re expanding the search into that area. this as we re learning that the plane s transponder was turned off. why did that happen? so we ve got the latest on the search and the investigation into its disappearance beginning with jim clancey. reporter: hot day here in kuala lumpur. especially hot for the defense
airliner, a sea of frustration. a veietnamese official saying this is due to insufficient information about where exactly to look. this suggests this is the plane s last location. but now a twist, a senior official telling cnn their radar shows it still may have been airborne more than an hour later flying the opposite direction of its destination. now challenges to that with them saying over night it s too early to say anything about the plane s flight path. the air force saying the last known location was just over this small island of pulau perak. adding to the mystery, the
the disappearance of the malaysian airlines flight seem this debris field. so that s the concern there. even more baffled today than they did yesterday. the question of course is there is still no sign of the whether or not these images from plane or the 239 people who were sunday morning were discovered on board. keep in mind that even when air sunday and vetted by the chinese france flight 447 disappeared in government over the last three days or whether 2009 pieces of wreckage were at any point it s the first piece of good news we ve had in first seen within a day or so five days on this. and were confirmed within five just to give people an idea, days even though it did take two good news, of course, being a years to find the plane itself. relative term. relative term. this time nothing. to give people an idea of how not a trace. big tease these objects are, one malaysian authorities today more than doubled the search area. is 343 by 59 feet, one is 46 it now covered 27
this was the plane s last known location over the south china sea, but now a twist. a senior malaysian air force official telling cnn their radar shows the boeing 777 may still have been airborne more than an hour later flying in the opposite direction of its destination, beijing. the same air force official says it was just over the small island of palau parac. now challenges to that. they re saying it s too early to issue any confirmations about the plane s actual flight path. adding to the mystery, the plane s trans ponder, the instrument that transmits its speed, direction stopped working or was turned off while cruising at 35,000 feet raising the possibility of a hijacking or a catastrophic incident. you have to have a very deliberative process to turn the trans ponder off.
i gave this question earlier to our andrew stevens and he said this is indeed a good point. someone makes a point here, and they wrote to me and said the plane lost contact near royal malaysian air force base, there is a suitable runway there. if it made it back over to the west coast, would have flown over at least three runways with suitable runways to land. right, i know, that s part of the mystery. it was the dead of night. we don t know what kind of navigational equipment was still functioning, if any. and again, we don t know if we ve had some type or some partial mechanical failure that cut off the electric systems, but the plane could still stay in the air because the engines kept running. we don t know that, or we don t know the other side, which is that the plane was flown in that direction on purpose, whether it was by the pilots or whether the pilots were ordered to do it under duress. that s the part we don t know yet. i know you don t want to speculate, but i ve been